Profile
I speak standard Danish and I have helped both Korean and Japanese language partners with their Danish studies. I've always enjoyed learning languages and had the opportunity to study English, French, German, Italian, Korean, and last but not least Japanese.
Learning
Korean
Language Skills
DanishNative
English
Swedish
Japanese
Lesson Feedback
Lesson history
| Last month | Last 3 months | All time | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Completed lessons | 0 | 0 | 123 |
| Attendance rate | 100% | 100% | 100% |
Activities
Try to have a look at viki.com. There you can find a lot of movies and dramas from Asia with subtitles :-) I just look at the posters/descriptions and go with what I think sounds interesting.
I just finished "when a snail falls in love" 如果蜗牛有爱情. It's 21 episodes x 30 min, the crime solving part and team dynamics are more prominent than the romance, and they seem to speak fairly clearly.
If you have a subscription you can watch it without ads.
0 votedJanuary 2, 20170When I started learning English I would typically make mistakes when words sounded similar. For instance
1) "Imprægnere" (Danish: the act of making something waterproof) / "impregnate"
2) "Kasket" (Danish: a cap/hat)/ "casket"The WORST language mistake I ever made, though, was a Swedish/Italian mistake. In grad school in Italy, I and a Swedish friend invited our class of about 10 people to join us for some "authentic Swedish fika" after our very last class. In Swedish, "fika" (both a noun and a verb) means to meet for coffee and something sweet. However, the coffee and cake part sort of got lost initially:
Prof: why?
Us: In Sweden it's basically an institution. There is a Swedish place just around the corner so we thought it would be nice to go together.
Prof: what do you mean?
Us: well, it's kind of rare in Italy...
Prof: I agree with you on that point, but what *exactly* do you have in mind?
Us: well, coffee and cake?
Prof: coffee and cake... *just* coffee and cake?
Us: [nodding enthusiastically] coffee and cake...
Prof: [looking like he had just barely avoided a nervous breakdown] maybe another day...Afterwards we realised that "fika" in Swedish sounds just like "fica" in Italian - except in Italian it's slang for a woman's private parts... I think I died a little bit inside when I found out...
0 votedJuly 15, 20160You're not alone. I've received some pretty weird messages (in spite of my photo being super neutral), and I reported them. I recently got so tired of it that I decided to just change my photo and disable the messaging and "add as friend" functions, but if you would rather keep the messaging functions open, I would suggest you flag users or send screen shots (+ a link to the user profile) to [email protected] every time you get inappropriate messages. Italki reacts promtly to such reports.
0 votedMay 28, 20160- Man kan bruge "altså" som et fyldord som f.eks. "well", eller man kan bruge det til at fremhæve noget. In case other Danish learners are wondering, but won't understand a full explanation in Danish, I'll write in English below. It can be used as a filler word like "well, ..." e.g. before explaining something to someone or you can use it to add emphasis to something. A few examples I could think of: 1) "Altså, først er du nødt til at..." ~ "well, first you need to..." 2) "Jeg forstår altså ikke, hvordan det kunne ske" ~ "I just don't understand how it could happen" 3) "Du er altså nødt til at stramme dig an" ~ "you really need to get your act together/make an effort" 4) "Jeg synes altså, at den er rigtig pæn" ~ "I think that it's really pretty" - adds emphasis to your opinion. For instance another person might ask for your opinion before buying because they are not quiiiite sure - or they might not think it's pretty so you state a contrasting opinion. 5) "det synes jeg altså ikke!" ~ "Well, I don't think so!" - you're stating your opinion, others might disagree, but you'll have to agree to disagree, because you won't budge at all.0 votedMay 16, 20161
Tigercub,
Thankfully there are some really good tutors here on Italki as well. If they kept using their classes as an opportunity to learn the students' native language and/or English instead of teaching the language they are paid to teach, I'm pretty sure the students would run for the hills eventually.
I had a few more thoughts:
1) I'd recommend you to update your Korean proficiency on your profile.
If you have come quite far on your own/with the classes you have followed, actually stating your level of proficiency would show potential partners that you do take your Korean studies seriously and have already passed the basic meet-and-greet stage.2) Somewhere you stated that you have gotten quite a few messages from people wanting to do exchanges. Do they send nice and motivated requests or a totally generic message? Based on the information in your profile, you're not giving them a lot to go on. In that case they choose you based on criteria you don't even know. Have you tried contacting people so that you make the offer instead? A lot of people state both their proficiency and their personal interests/their work interest in their profiles. If someone happens to study/work in the same field as you, and you're both at a level where you're beginning to be able to have an actual conversation that might increase the chances of success since 1) you're somewhat equally matched, 2) you have something in common which lowers the risk of immediately running out of things to talk about.
3) I am actually doing some "exchanges" which are focused on one language only. That goes for both Korean (I'm the one who gets to learn the language, and I hope I'm somewhat good company in return) and Danish (I'm the one to offer the language part). Here the 50/50 from a language perspective simply isn't possible because of different target languages, but I enjoy speaking with them, and I hope that's a mutual feeling.
0 votedMarch 20, 20160I'm sorry you're unhappy with your language exchange experiences. I'm a fellow Korean learner, and I actually think I have benefited a lot from exchanges. Before joining Italki (now I take paid classes as well) I relied only on self studying and weekly help from some Korean exchange students at my university since I was unable to follow a regular class.
My approach is a bit different from yours, though, in the sense that I and my language partners approached it as a way of building a friendship using language learning as a common starting point instead of considering it a simple business transaction. And by that I don't mean that someone should let others exploit them. In my experience, it can also work through online exchanges, but the screening of potential partners might take longer time/more care.
An approach which has worked well for my past exchanges when in need of structure in the beginning is to pick a topic in advance to have a starting point, pick a topic that allows you to get to know each other, write something about that topic in advance if time allows, correct each others' essays, and speak as much about it as your knowledge and confidence allows. In the beginning that meant that I did not speak AT ALL but focused only on learning new words and grammar points, as well as how to pronounce individual words, but now I'm forcing myself to speak as much as possible to connect the dots. That's just what I was most comfortable with.
If it doesn't appeal to you at all, I'd suggest just taking actual classes with tutors who do not reverse the tutor/student roles (thankfully they do exist - check their reviews and see how many students keep returning).
I think Aegis' analogy of building little islands of correct language is a good one, and small talk is a good way to expand the number of topics even if you have agreed on one in advance.
I hope you find a way :-)
0 votedMarch 19, 20160
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